The present invention is directed to a lightweight construction material. The material may be formed into panels of varying sizes.
Typical building panels of gypsum or the like tend to be comparatively heavy and weak and may not have sufficient fire resistance. The present material may be formed into various lightweight configurations, including prefabricated building panels. Previous building panel configurations that have been formulated to be lighter in weight have not been able to be produced with consistent characteristics.
One material used to reduce weight in building materials is perlite, which is a generic term for naturally occurring siliceous rock. When perlite is heated to a suitable point in its softening range (about 1600° F.), it pops in a manner similar to popcorn as the combined water vaporizes and the perlite expands from four to twenty times its original volume. This expansion is due to the presence of two to six percent combined water in the crude perlite rock. Because of perlite's insulating characteristics and light weight, it is widely used as a loose-fill insulation in masonry construction. In such an application, the loose-fill perlite insulation is poured into the cavities of concrete block.
In past applications, water absorbent perlite powder has been utilized, and this powder absorbs water in a variable and imprecise manner. This makes the resulting material heavier and weaker due to the presence of retained water after the material has set. There exists a need for a formulation and method of producing lightweight construction material that insulates and can be fabricated into building panels.